Hey — this is a classic issue: readsf~ doesn’t natively support MP3 / compressed formats in Pd / Purr-Data, so it’ll refuse with “bad header” errors on .mp3, .flac, etc.
A couple of workarounds you might try-

• Convert your MP3s to WAV (or another PCM format) and use those with readsf~

• Use an external based on FFmpeg / ffplay (someone on the forum suggested that route)

• Or load via another object that supports compressed formats (if available / compiled in your build)

If you tell me your OS and Purr-Data build, I can suggest a patch or external you can drop in that does support mp3 inside Pd.
Alternatively, check out this free tool. https://editmp3tags.com/

if you mean pitch shifting with constant duration
3.audio.examples/I07.phase.vocoder.pd explains how to do this:
The [pd read-windows] sub patch within [pd fft-analysis] sub patch explains it more
here is a sample recording from a project I'm currently making using this
puredata.mp3

@polyplexmescalia said:

It will be difficult but I will try nontheless before I just use the VST. Thank you!

Had a thought, you might not even have to simulate true mp3 encoding -- you might just randomly zero out some bins probabilistically, and weight the zeroing-out so that higher or quieter bins are more likely to be discarded. That would mess up transients and give that watery effect to noisy sounds like cymbals (as usually happens with low-rate mp3 encoding). Worth a try, and much easier to implement than a full psychoacoustic model.

hjh

@porres Thanks for your interest! This is an envelope generator that is trying to copy and improve on an effect I used in a piece way back in the '90s. It was originally done with a Valley People Gatex, which I'm about to give away to the friend who turned me on to them. Anyway, if I set the Gatex to 0.2s release time, a 60dB range, and then ride the threshold to constantly trigger on an external key (for which I usually used speech so it would be fast and unpredictable), I'd get a pleasing chattering sound with a consistent soft click on the attack. Even though the release is so short, the triggers are coming awfully fast so the gate is retriggering before it has had a chance to fully close.

I made some recordings of the Gatex and tried to measure what it was doing, but as these things often go, I found that the Pd simulation sounded more true to the original with parameters that didn't quite match what I had measured. The release curve I'm using is much steeper at the beginning, release time much longer, and the attack curve is longer and logarithmic. I kept the 20ms sustain time as is. I found that if I retriggered the same [vline~] before it had had a chance to fully release, it would either pop too much (if I made it jump to 0 first), or had inconsistent attacks (if the new attack didn't start from 0), so that's why there's two of them computing the ramps and hold. I'm outputting whichever one is higher at any given moment. When a new trigger comes in, I look to see which EG is lower (and thus not seen on the output) and route the new trigger to it. It first jumps to 0, but you don't hear it click because I'm outputting the other one at that instant.

To control the curvature of the attack and release, I use [vline~] again to synchronize the values used to shape the attack and release via [pow~]. Finally, I noticed that the Gatex had a unpredictable amplitude variation, probably based on the key signal at the moment the trigger was detected. That's what the randomized volume stuff is for, although the Gatex's actual variation is only 3 dB, if that. I'm not trying to copy their detection algorithm because for my music there's usually been no correlation between the main channel and the side chain, so I just use randomized [delay]s to trigger it, which is how my troubles began. Without the intervening [vline~], the unsynchronized random volume part added unpredictable discontinuities, especially when the trigger density was high.

Here's some sound: jittery gate demo.mp3

Hi, it's been a while, here we go:

RELEASE NOTES:

Hi, it's been almost 8 months without an update and I never took this long!!! So there's a lot of new stuff to cover, because it's not like I've been just sleeping around

The reason for the delay is that I'm trying to pair up with the release cycles of PlugData and we're having trouble syncing up. PlugData 0.9.0 came out recently after a delay of 6 months and we couldn't really sync and pair up then... we had no luck in syncing for a new update now, so now I'm just releasing it up cause enough is enough, and hopefully in the next plugdata release we can sync and offer the same version.

As usual, the development pace is always quite busy and I'm just arbitrarily wrapping things up in the middle of adding more and more things that will just have to wait.

First, I had promised support for double precision. I made changes so we can build for it, but it's not really working yet when I uploaded to deken and tested it. So, next time?

And now for the biggest announcement: - I'm finally and officially releasing a new pack as a submodule, which is a set of abstractions inspired by EuroRack Modules, so I'm thinking of VCV like things but into the Pd paradigm. Some similar stuff has been made for Pd over the years, most notably and famously "Automatonism", but I'm really proud of what I'm offering. I'm not trying to pretend Pd is a modular rack and I'm taking advantage of being in Pd. I'm naming this submodule "Modular EuroRacks Dancing Along" (💩 M.E.R.D.A 💩) and I've been working on it for a year and a half now (amongst many other things I do). PlugData has been offering this for a while now, by the way. Not really fully in sync though.

MERDA modules are polyphonic, thanks to multichannel connections introduced in Pd 0.54! There are 20 modules so far and some are quite high level. I'm offering a PLAITS module based on the Mutable Instruments version. I have a 6-Op Phase Modulation module. A "Gendyn" module which is pretty cool. I'm also including an "extra" module that is not really quite a modular thing at all but fits well called "brane", which was a vanilla patch I first wrote like 15 years ago and is a cool granular live sampler and harmonizer. You'll also find the basics, like oscillators, filters, ADSR envelope and stuff I'm still working on. Lastly, a cool thing is that it has a nice presets system that still needs more work but is doing the job so far.

There are ideas and plans to add hundreds more MERDA modules, let's see when and if I can. People can collaborate and help me and create modules that follow the template by the way

Thanks to Tim Schoen, [play.file~] is now a compiled object instead of an abstraction and it supports MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIF, AAC, OGG & OPUS audio file extensions. A new [sfload] object can import these files into arrays (but still needs lots of more work). There are many other player objects in ELSE that can load and play samples but these don't yet support these new formats (hang in there for the next version update).

Tim also worked on new [pdlink] and [pdlink~] objects, which send control and signal data to/from Pd instances, versions and even forks of Pure Data (it's like [send]/[receive] and [send~]/[receive~], all you need is a symbol, no complicated network or OSC configuration!). And yes, it works via UDP between different computers on the same network. And hell yeah, [pdlink~] has multichannel connections support! By the way, you can also communicate to a [pd~] subprocess. This will be part of ELSE and PlugData of course, and will allow easy communication between PlugData and Pd-Vanilla for instance.

The great pd-lib-build system has been replaced for a 'cmake' build process called 'pd.build' by Pierre Guillot. This was supposed to simplify things. Also, the [sfont~] object was a nightmare to build and with several dependencies that was simply hell to manage, now we have a new and much simpler system and NO DEPENDENCIES AT ALL!!! Some very rare file formats with obscure and seldom sound file extensions may not work though... (and I don't care, most and the 'sane' ones will work). The object now also dumps all preset information with a new message and backwards compatibility broke a bit

I'm now back to offering a modified version of [pdlua] as part of ELSE, which has recently seen major upgrades by Tim to support graphics and signals! This is currently needed in ELSE to provide a new version of [circle] that needed to be rewritten in lua so it'd look the same in PlugData. Ideally I'd hope I could only offer compiled GUI objects, but... things are not ideal

The lua loader works by just loading the ELSE library, no need for anything "else". I'm not providing the actual [pdlua] and [pdluax] objects as they are not necessary, and this is basically the only modification. Since PlugData provides support for externals in lua, if you load ELSE you can make use of stuff made for PlugData with lua without the need to install [pdlua] in Pd-Vanilla.

For next, we're working on a [lua] object that will allow inline scripting and will also work for audio signals (again, wait for the next version)! Also for the next version, I'm saving Ben Wesch's nice 3d oscilloscope made in lua (it'll be called [scope3d~]). There's a lot going on with the lua development, which is very exciting.

As for more actual new objects I'm including, we have [vcf2~] and [damp.osc~]. The first is a complex one pole resonant filter that provides a damping oscillation for a ringing time you can set, the next is an oscillator based on it. There's also the new [velvet~] object, a cool and multichannel velvet noise generator that you can also adjust to morph into white noise.

I wasn't able to add multichannel capabilities to many existing objects in ELSE in this one, just a couple of them ([cosine~] and [pimp~]). Total number of objects that are multichannel aware now are: 92! This is almost a third of the number of audio objects in ELSE. I think that a bit over half might be a reasonably desired target. More multichannel support for existing objects to come in the next releases.

Total number of objects in the ELSE library is now 551!

As for the Live Electronics tutorial, as usual, there are new examples for new objects, and I made a good revision of the advanced filter section, where I added many examples to better explain how [slop~] works, with equivalent [fexpr~] implementations.

Total number of examples in the Live Electronics Tutorial is now 528!

There are more details of course, and breaking changes as usual, but these are the highlights! For a full changelog, check https://github.com/porres/pd-else/releases/tag/v.1.0-rc12 (or below at this post).

As mentioned, unfortunately, ELSE RC12 is not yet fully merged, paired up and 100% synced in PlugData. PlugData is now at version 0.9.1, reaching the 1.0 version soon. Since ELSE is currently so tightly synced to the development of PlugData, the idea is to finally offer a final 1.0 version of ELSE when PlugData 1.0 is out. Hence, it's getting closer than ever Hopefully we will have a 100% synced ELSE/PlugData release when 0.9.2 is out (with a RC 13 maybe?).

Please support me on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/porres
You can follow me on instagram as well if you like... I'm always posting Pd development stuff over there https://www.instagram.com/alexandre.torres.porres/

cheers

ps. Binaries for mac/linux/windows are available via deken. I needed help for raspberry pi

CHANGELOG:

LIBRARY:

Breaking changes:

• [oscope~] renamed to [scope~]
• [plaits~] changed inlet order of modulation inputs and some method/flags name. If a MIDI pitch of 0 or less input is given, it becomes a '0hz'.
• [gbman~] changed signal output range, it is now filtered to remove DC and rescaled to a sane -1 to 1 audio range.
• [dust~] and [dust2~] go now up to the sample rate and become white noise (removed restriction that forced actual impulses, that is, no conscutive non zero values)
• [cmul~] object removed (this was only used in the old conv~ abstraction to try and reduce a bit the terrible CPU load)
• [findfile] object removed (use vanilla's [file which] now that it has been updated in Pd 0.55-0)
• [voices] swapped retrig modes 0 and 1, 'voices' renamed to 'n', now it always changes voice number by default as in [poly] (this was already happening unintentionally as a bug when one voice was already taken). The 'split' mode was removed (just use [route], will you?)
• [voices~] was also affected by changes in [voices] of course, such as 'voices' message being renamed to 'n'.
• [sr~]/[nyquist] changed output loading time to 'init' bang
• [sample~] object was significantly redesigned and lots of stuff changed, new messages and flags, added support for 64-bit audio files (Pd 0.55 in double precision and ELSE compiled for 64 bits is required for this). Info outlet now also outputs values for lenght in ms and bit depth.
• [sfont~] uses now a simpler build system and this might not load very very rare and unusual sound formats.

Enhancements/fixes/other changes:

• builds for double precision is now supposedly supported, by the way, the build system was changed from pd-lib-builder to pd.build by Pierre Guillot.
• [play.file~] is now a compiled object instead of an abstraction thanks to Tim Schoen, and it supports MP3, FLAC, WAV, AIF, AAC, OGG & OPUS file extensions.
• Support for double precision compilation was improved and should be working for all objects (not yet providing binaries and fully tested yet by the way).
• The ELSE binary now loads a modified version of [pdlua], but no [pdlua] and [pdluax] objects are provided.
• added signal to 2nd inlet of [rm~].
• fixed 'glide' message for [mono~].
• fixed [voices] consistency check bug in rightmost outlet and other minor bugs, added flags for 'n', 'steal' and offset.
• [gain~] and [gain2~] changed learn/forget shortcut
• [knob] fixed sending messages to 'empty' when it shouldn't, ignore nan/inf, prevent a tcl/tk error if lower and upper values are the same; added "learn/forget" messages and shortcut for a midi learn mechanism.
• [mpe.in] now outputs port number and you can select which port to listen to.
• Other MIDI in objects now deal with port number encoded to channel as native Pd objects. Objects affected are [midi.learn], [midi.in], [note.in], [ctl.in], [bend.in], [pgm.in], [touch.in] and [ptouch.in].
• [pi]/[e] now takes a value name argument.
• [sr~]/[nyquist~] take clicks now and a value name argument.
• fixed phase modulation issues with [impulse~] and [pimp~].
• [cosine~] fixed sync input.
• added multichannel features to [cosine~] and [pimp~].
• [plaits~] added a new 'transp' message and a functionality to allow MIDI input to supersede signal connections (needed for the 'merda' version [see below]), fixed MIDI velocity.
• [pluck~] added a new functionality to allow MIDI input to supersede signal connections (needed for the 'merda' version [see below]).
• 26 new objects, [velvet~], [vcf2~], [damp.osc~], [sfload], [pdlink] and [pdlink~], plus abstractions from a newly included submodule called "Modular Euro Racks Dancing Along" (M.E.R.D.A)! Warning, this is all just very very experimental still, the object are: [adsr.m~], [brane.m~], [chorus.m~], [delay.m~], [drive.m~], [flanger.m~], [gendyn.m~], [lfo.m~], [phaser.m~], [plaits.m~], [plate.rev.m~], [pluck.m~], [pm6.m~], [presets.m], [rm.m~], [seq8.m~], [sig.m~], [vca.m~], [vcf.m~] and [vco.m~] (6 of these are multichannel aware).

Objects count: total of 551 (307 signal objects [92 of which are MC aware] and 244 control objects)!

• 311 coded objects (203 signal objects / 108 control objects
• 240 abstractions (104 signal objects / 136 control objects)

TUTORIAL:

• New examples and revisions to add the new objects, features and breaking changes in ELSE.
• Added a couple of examples for network communication via FUDI and [pdlink]/[pdlink~]
• Section 36-Filters(Advanced) revised, added more examples and details on how [slop~] works.
• Total number of examples is now 528!

I just learned about the Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT) and I see that it's not only used in mp3 compression, but is also often applied on overlapped power-of-two windows like an FFT. When I say "learned about" I don't mean I understand it, I just mean "became aware of".

I've always wondered why some of my FFT resynthesis patches, when run under smaller block sizes, have that low bitrate mp3 sound. I would describe it as squeggy bubbling. Are the two transforms related? Is that crappy sound due to something they both share, or is it just coincidence?

ceammc lib have a [snd.file] object working like [soundfiler], that support mp3 and many more format
like AAC AIFF ALAC AU AVR CAF FLAC HTK IFF MACE3:1 MAC6:1 MAT4 MAT5 MP3 MP4 MPC OGG PAF PVF RAW RF64 SD2 SDS SF VOC W64 WAV WAVEX WVE XI.

Dorisma said:

I don't use the audio wav files format anymore because it is difficult to read and causes many problems. Instead, I decided to convert on https://convertr.org/wav-to-mp3 all the files in mp3 format supported by any application.

I realize this is a couple years old comment now, but: [soundfiler] does not support mp3 format.

I'm not sure which audio programming environments do support MP3.

• Pd, no ("soundfiler read: /home/xxxxx/Music/23-0714-ambient-jam.mp3: unknown header format").
• Max/MSP, no ("can't open").
• SuperCollider, no ("File '/home/xxxxx/Music/23-0714-ambient-jam.mp3' could not be opened: Format not recognised.").
• I don't have ChucK or Reaktor, can't test those. Reaktor might support MP3 since it's a commercial product. ChucK... reference docs for SndBuf seem difficult to locate, so, I give up, I don't know.

So the approach of converting all WAVs to MP3 seems to be based on a mistaken assumption. For use with Pd, this is not the way to go.

hjh

@Dorisma said:

It is possible that due to an old hard disk, the computer may not be able to open and play (readsf ~) multiple wav files simultaneously. One solution would be to add an SSD that would make the work of the computer system easier. But that would involve too much cost. I donțt use the audio wav files format anymore because it is difficult to read and causes many problems. Instead, I decided to convert on https://convertr.org/wav-to- mp3 all the files in mp3 format supported by any application.

I'll follow all your steps, but still, I am facing some issues.

This sound clip demonstrates the glitch, just after 0:03, for about one second

glitch.mp3